


eres un amor

by malakbox



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Memories, Mild Hurt/Comfort, They love each other so much, Yearning, bad at tags tbh, i love them, self indulgent, song inspired fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26278474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malakbox/pseuds/malakbox
Summary: he finds himself mumbling, “i miss you.” into lance’s neck, in which he receives a soft hum against his cheek.“i’m right here, lovely.” you’re lovely.but you feel so far away from me.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	eres un amor

He is given the gift of seeing.

He sees the white tendrils of hair falling over Allura’s fair collarbones, he sees the sparkle in Coran’s eyes at the mention of a tale, he sees the glare in the glasses that rest on Pidge’s button nose, he sees the rays of sun beam from Hunk’s turbulent sighs, he sees the weight of the sky fall on Shiro’s shoulders. He sees his family at the sea, blistered into the sand by their knees at his arrival.

He sees the way lilac eyes travel up to his nape, his lips, his face, his hair, _his soul_. He hears the rasp of a tired chuckle strum softly through his ears, amping his veins and thrumming against his chest like a warning drum. He feels the breathing weight against his shoulder, the caress to his arm, the touch of calloused hands that have grasped the stars and burned with them.

He sees Keith.

It didn’t start like this. They didn’t start like this, in Lance’s memories.

His memories start at the beginning of time, their first lock of eyes between unspoken reverence and space. The banes of their existence were deemed incompatible; Lance lived for the pitter patter of rain that he missed dearly, missed the cool touch of the sky smothering him with its kisses of mirth. He lived for Varadero, grains of sand sifting through his limbs and the beach a perfectly painted mural on display in his thoughts. Yes, Lance lived for these simplicities, but they were not his lifeline.

Keith survived for the hope- for the sake of a world untouched by evil. He survived for his lost family, having to stand unsteadily on the ground that he built up for himself. He survived the corner of being alone between the threads in being lonely, yet craved to live. Despite this, Keith was sure that a lifetime of irreversible damage owed him a lifeline. It was the least the universe could do for him.

But Lance McClain oh so knew how much Keith Kogane dreaded being alone with himself in loneliness, while the sun took its last breath for the day and invited the moon to take his place.

His heart cares far too much for the other boy, that over time, he slowly became afraid to keep it open long enough for Keith to tear his heartstrings back like bloody sheep wool and peek inside. It was a dumb thing to be afraid of, but Lance doesn’t think he’s ready for that yet.

The more the thought about it, the more he guesses he would never be.

Lance’s head is full of _Keith, Keith, Keith,_ and he swears his ears begin to ring. He wishes he could free his adoration for the angel in his eyes but he _can’t._

“There’s somethin’ about you, babe.” Lance recalls his terribly flustered flirting with Keith, and how he rather would’ve dug himself into the ground than see Keith’s reaction. But he hears a giggle, he swears it, and sees a glimpse of Keith’s quirked smile.

“Babe? I can be your babe.” _Only if you won’t let go._

And they unravel from there.

On their first date, one of Lance’s pieces of remembrance bring up Keith in his wilted beauty, and the way he stared at the latter in such a yearning manner. He didn’t think anything of it back then.

And sadly, the proclaimed lover boy doesn’t remember much of their first date, amidst all the rubble of their vintage planet, at all. He sees flashes of brushing Keith’s bangs from his eyes, he sees Keith sipping from his sunken drink, he sees Keith sitting next to him on the roof of the lively McClain family beach house. Flushed, petite, lithe, and pretty as always.

Lance remembers words.

“L-Lance.” The ink haired boy- no, _man,_ casted his eyes up into the sun’s last appearance of the night. His body trembled with heavy exhaustion, and perhaps deep in there, a little hidden nervousness.

“Keith.”

Their hands laid out stretched beside their limp bodies, fingertips touching, but not quite reaching.

There was silence for a moment, until Keith’s longing rasp plays like the wind’s whistle of flight. “Do you think we could’ve done more?” And suddenly at the question, there was painful static blaring in Lance’s ears. For a moment it was if he couldn’t breathe, and he was back at the Garrison with tight knitted fingers and a determination to just _be._ For a moment he was young and dumb again, and so afraid.

Keith refers to the universe in his sentiment. Once paladins, once defending the entire universe, Lance knew they had blood on their hands. Something they all wish wasn’t real. He’s terrified of leaving red fingerprints in his wake. Lance gapes at the other for a moment, before remembering how damn fond of Keith he has came to be. How damn honest he has to be for the being on the other side of him. “I think we did enough. We did everything we coul-“

He stops short at the electric feel his hands and arms send flying into his heart once Keith abruptly reaches for his hand, and the hold is tight. The hold is tight enough to bind their souls into one and keep them plastered together for eternity. But that was not the occurrence for Keith at the time.

“Lance, w-we did enough, I _know_ that.” He almost sounds tired, as if he’s had to say it multiple times. To himself, he most likely has.

“But more ... more? We could’ve done more. Was there another chance for us to? We had so much to do but _so little time_ , Lance-!”

Keith finds himself engulfed in soft warmth just as his breath hitched on a cry. He’s so solid and tense that he finds himself seeking purchase in Lance’s touch, eventually giving in and falling loose. Lance smells like Sunday mornings and the rain that peaks in autumn, he smells like his mother’s voice and laugh. There’s the sound of the sea in their breathing, the taste of it’s foam in Lance’s cotton shirt, the freeze of it’s wave stuck in the air. He tugs at the back of the brunette’s jacket, desperately clinging onto him as though he’d disappear into thin air.

Honestly, that’s what Keith was most afraid of.

Lance hushes his soliloquy of comfort with a series of shh’s, trying to stick himself into the brick of the roof that holds their fallen vessels. “You did everything you could. You did everything.” _You are everything_ , remains unsaid.

_You are everything that has done anything for this universe, and it’s shamefully given you nothing in return._

Neither of the two believed in false dreams. Lance dreamed of the empty seams in space, with the cosmos at his right hand and shuttles at his left. Keith dreamed of home, a foreign place and person and thing that he seeked. They were once hoped for, they were once something the boys tenderly thought they could reach if they just kept going up, up, up just a little further- … they fell.

They found their way falling into each other’s hold, cautiously, almost as if they were afraid it wouldn’t last. But, _god,_ it did. It did last, and they were here. Years after childish rivalry, hesitant days of confessions and nights of heavy banter of past scenes, they were here now.

And Lance is finally here lying in his bed that Keith finds himself crawling into most nights. He’s _happy_. He murmurs “ _Cariño_ _,_ ” the only word that lulls Keith back into his arms, to stay a little while longer.

Lance says it as if it’s a mantra, his own perfected melody of a song in which only he and Keith share the lyrics to. “ _Cariño_ , let’s sleep just a few more minutes .. _Cariño,_ aren’t you tired? .. I’ve got you, _mi cariño_..”

It’s the loveliest endearment they can fathom.

Most days Keith wishes he could fold himself up into Lance’s sheets, hoping to stay long enough that the mattress consumes him and he stays apart of his lover’s bed for as long as his body sleeps there. Today is one of those days, and it takes everything in him not to dig himself deeper into Lance’s bare chest. Soft, warm, scarred, and calming as always.

He finds himself mumbling, “I miss you,” into Lance’s neck, in which he receives a soft hum against his cheek.

“I’m right here, lovely.” _You’re lovely._

_But you feel so far away from me._

It’s as if the words fell from Keith’s mouth without him realizing in their small ripple of time, because Lance is sitting up from his cloud of a pillow with a soft sigh and Keith’s heart is hammering and yelling, barely screaming _don’t go don’t go don’t go-_

“Hey. Hey,” Sun washed skin nudges up his chin, tilting it up so delicately that Keith almost cries at how his chest contorts at the touch. His cheek fits snug in Lance’s palm, and he _melts_. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m here.” The brunette had the specialty of peaking into Keith’s head, kissing it softly, knowingly reassuring any of his worries beforehand.

They’re here together, and they silently wish to stay. _Stay longer, can we stay together a while longer, can we?_ They figure it could’ve been the end of the world, or the beginning of its story, or even the blink in their masterpiece of a sunset. 

Sometimes Pidge and Hunk, hip by hip with clattered grins, will ask Lance what Keith means; What does he mean to Lance? What does he mean to them? What does he mean to the universe he gave up everything so selflessly for? And Lance always says,

“He means the world to me. He’s my world.”

And it’s the truth.

Shiro converses with Keith often, his kid brother not by blood but by hardships through bond, and ponders over why Keith chose Lance in a barrel of necessity. Why did you choose the boy birthed from the ocean? Why do you think you alone could have done more? Why don’t you believe us when we say the truth otherwise ? And Keith mumbles with a tired smile on his face,

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

And it is not the truth.

Out of all questions, he knows the answer as to why he chose Lance. He never told this story to anyone but himself. In all honesty, the boy with the ruffled mullet clung to his neck didn’t have to do much choosing. It’s like Lance sauntered into his heart with his casual strut all on his own, and intended to stay there. As a result, Keith let him. Keith let him _stay_ , and soon realized that Lance would keep his little distant heart some company of his own. His walls were knocked on so tenderly by Lance that it hurt, instead of simply being pushed over, and Keith let him.

For the first time in his life, Keith had let someone see his skin, his mind, his thoughts. _Lance was particularly good at just seeing._

And he was glad that this someone was Lance.

Their heads shift back to where they are now. _Here, together_. Lance is muttering small grammatical mysteries of the language the sea birthed him with, and Keith has yet to learn most of it. but he tries, just for Lance. Every day he tries for his- oh.

_Oh._

“Lance,” He’s gasping at his drowning point by now.

“Keith?”

This time it’s more of a question than their usual settling statement. Keith sings Lance’s name from his tongue, and like a nightingale, Lance is supposed to preach Keith’s. But he does not let it faze him.

“I know now. Lance, I know what you are to me now.” Lance is cupping Keith’s face with both tender palms at that. “The universe … You’re my universe.”

_You’re my universe._

There’s disbelief written across Lance’s freckled skin, and his flickering eyes begin to gloss over even before he even manages to huff out a small laugh with a small, “Yeah?”

“Yeah. “Y-yes, yes. For my entire life I’ve asked the universe to give me a piece of itself in return for everything- something, _anything_ , Lance. But I’ve had it for so long and I’ve been _so blind._ ”

They’re both trembling in their own abode by now, and their tears find their way to a small hole in their chests. It hurts, it _hurts_ so bad, and it is as lovely as them. Keith continues even as he struggles to breath with the galaxy in his lungs and the stars poking at his sides. “The universe gave itself to me,”

_And it is you._

Neither of them needed to hear it, or say it, they seemed to know by now. When Lance reaches down to kiss Keith’s lips, his wet and sharp jaw, the tension at his temple, his entire mark of outer beauty, they become silent.

They don’t need words, they never did. And Lance can see now, more than ever- that they’re lovely.

_They are so lovely_.

**Author's Note:**

> this was heavily inspired by the song cariño - the marías & it has given me the deep seeing depths of gay Yearning. it’s such a klance song & with spanish as my first language, the term “cariño” has always been one of my favorite endearments. i hope this short self indulgent fic was enjoyable


End file.
